Has the Glut of Summer Movies Finally Hit the Point of Diminishing Returns?

Image: Man of Steel, Pacific Rim, Iron Man 3

It’s been an odd summer at the box office, with an avalanche of blockbuster science fiction and fantasy flicks hitting theaters. The sheer volume of mega-movies has made it difficult to keep track of everything that’s come out in the last few months, or what’s coming soon. For example, you might assume that a buddy action comedy about dead cops starring Ryan Reynolds and Jeff Bridges would be a big deal, but RIPD — opening on Friday — has practically disappeared amidst the chatter about Pacific Rim, Man of Steel and other movies. Is this the summer that finally proves that you can have too much of a good thing?

Here’s a brief list of big-budget genre movies that have been released in the last three months: Oblivion, Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, After Earth, Man of Steel, World War Z, The Lone Ranger and Pacific Rim. That’s ignoring non-genre or quasi-genre fare that has been equally hyped — The Great Gatsby, say, or Fast and Furious 6 — during that same period, or Monsters University and Despicable Me 2, the two big animated movies of the summer. Even so, it’s practically a rate of one massive genre movie every couple of weeks, dominating the conversation and skewing perceptions of everything around it.

The result is a summer where blockbuster cinema may have finally reached the point where it’s eating itself. With something new and exciting every week, the turnover has become so rapid that it’s almost ridiculous. Something like Iron Man 3 feels like it came from another year, never mind the end of April; even Man of Steel seems passé, despite the fact that the movie has only been in theaters a month.

For all that we decry shortening attention spans, this summer’s blockbuster movie season has gleefully promoted that very impulse, with the speedy turnover of big movies meaning that viewers have, at best, two weeks to see new releases and express opinions about them before the zeitgeist has moved on to something else. Be warned: The deadline on making Jaeger jokes is already fast approaching.

And then there are movies like RED2 andthe aforementioned RIPD, new releases that already appear to have disappeared amongst the bigger, more heavily hyped movies surrounding them. The summer blockbuster glut may not just affect the shelf life of the biggest movies, but also erode visibility of the mid-level summer movie altogether. Think about the box office fates of something like The Heat or White House Down, both of which won’t have the chance to recoup their budgets before being squeezed out of the multiplex by the next hopeful big thing.

Looking at the box office to date for 2013, it’s clear that the movies that are successful are pretty damn successful, nonetheless. As a moviegoer, however, this summer has felt particularly overwhelming, unforgiving and exhausting, as well as unsupportive to features that could, otherwise, have found a more appreciative audience and greater success. If the trend continues in future years, the summer could end being a space reserved solely for mammoth movies and small upstarts that can easily make their money back in the three-week window they have in theaters, with mid-list movies looking for homes elsewhere.

July 17, 2013 10:30 a.m. Correction: The release date of RIPD is July 19, 2013.